The place to be in Oak Lawn

Phil Arvia reports that Oak Lawn Community High School let all of its fall coaches go this morning. Whether or not they'll be retained for next year depends on how much money the state ponies up, officials say.

It was a quiet night last night at the village board meeting, due in part to Mayor Dave Heilmann's absence.

Heilmann's 79-year-old father, Joseph, passed away last week, and board members expressed their sympathies Tuesday night for the mayor. Trustee Carol Quinlan remembered the elder Heilmann as a family man, active St. Linus parishioner and avid golfer who was often a fixture at board meetings.

You can read the family's obituary for Mr. Heilmann on the Blake-Lamb Funeral Home's Web site. Services have been held.

Wine and flowers are a tried-and-true pair for any man looking to impress a date, or perhaps get out of the doghouse. Now, one Oak Lawn business owner is taking the classic romantic combo a step further.

Avenue Flower Shop has added a new wine bar inside the store, stocked with more than 50 varieties of wine and a selection of craft beers. Customers can drop by to have a drink, order a bouquet or do both inside the airy 2,300-square-foot space.

The SouthtownStar dropped by the newly opened wine bar last week to chat with owner Denise Roll about how she came up with the idea for a flower-and-wine-bar combo, and why she's confident it will work.

Callie Pieczara never got to meet Michael Murphy, but she has him to thank for her new violin.

The fifth-grader at St. Catherine of Alexandria School in Oak Lawn was part of the first crop of local students to win scholarships from the Michael J. Murphy Memorial Fund. Callie's scholarship is paying for private lessons and an instrument, which the 10-year-old's grandmother, Evelyn Spitzer, said she couldn't have afforded otherwise on her fixed income.

"She was tickled, and so was I," said Spitzer, who cares for Callie. "When she saw the violin they provided her with, she was ecstatic."

The Michael J. Murphy Scholarship Fund launched last year as a way to remember Murphy, a 31-year-old musician from Chicago's Mount Greenwood community who was killed in a hit-and-run car accident in June 2008. You can read more about this year's scholarship winners in my column this week.

The federal government last week informed the village that an additional five railroad crossings were approved for quiet zone designation, village manager Larry Deetjen said at Tuesday's village board meeting.

An Oak Lawn man apparently was crushed to death early Wednesday at a food plant on the Southwest Side.

According to police, the Cook County medical examiner's office identified the man as Patrick Lynch, 62. Police said he suffered a contusion to the chest at the Nabisco food plant, 7300 S. Kedize Ave., about 2:30 a.m.

Lynch, of the 9300 block of South Parkside Ave., was pronounced dead at 3 a.m. at Christ Medical Center in Oak Lawn, according to a spokesman for the medical examiner's office.
Wentworth Area detectives are investigating. An autopsy was scheduled for later today.

According to the agenda, Oak Lawn will be talking trains, with an update on the quiet zone along the rail tracks. They're also announcing a new equipment purchase for the fire department and approving a few agreements and contracts, including one with, strangely, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. More to come...